Sparkles of jade
by shadows-of-flame
Summary: Pain. Torture. Longing. Want. In Keira's opinion, if he wants to choose his path and be with her, he is no longer her problem. Will a bracelet, and a night at the Naughty Ottsel give Keira her shoulder to cry on? Keirax? JakxAshelin


Sparkles of jade  
By shadows/of/flame 

Jak and the "him" in italics are two different people. I'll shut up now.

* * *

Through years of torture, pain, longing and wait, this was the final result.  
For her, it was more pain.  
For him, it was the pleasure of knowing someone cared and loved for him, but the unbearable pain of knowing he'd thrown away the one thing that was always on his mind. 

The blond wished he could wrap his arms around her hips again, nuzzle her close and trail kisses down her arms. Hold her close, hear her cry out his name whenever she saw him.

All of this he could do when they were together, but not anymore.

He had chosen a path, the wrong path in a lot of people's eyes, and she could only sit by and watch as he travelled down it, arm and arm with the baroness.

The young green haired girl sat dully at the Naughty Ottsel, fiddling with the jade bracelet that she had been given by Torn for her birthday the previous week.

She had no one to cling to, her hopes of starting a new life with the one she loved drastically reduced when the key player was missing, and slowly but surely she lapsed back into her usual life.

Jak was no longer there to see her smile.  
The person she needed most to be there wasn't, rather always making excuses so he could be out with Ashelin, kissing and joking with HER instead.

It drove Keira crazy.  
Which was why she avoided Freedom HQ at night.

After the Dark Makers were defeated, parties sprung up everywhere, but only two of the world's saviours were out partying.

That night, the Naughty Ottsel had been party-free, and that was where you could find Keira, Torn, Daxter, and a handful of others who just wanted to have a nice dinner to celebrate with loved ones and friends.

Keira looked back on that night, and knew, even though she had immensely enjoyed it, she should be very, very ashamed of herself.

_'I'm as bad as him if I do that again...'_

The two of them were drunk, it was understandable, as with parties came liquor.  
Lots of liquor.

But what was worse, was that she could even admit liking what had happened between them.  
_He_ wasn't hard-ass drunk like her, and had just simply taken her to her room, but it had developed into more when they had fallen.

Fallen in love, or another sense of the word would never be known.

Somehow, she felt unloyal.  
Unloyal to the blond hero that had left her.

But the other side of her brain disagreed.  
HE was the one bedding Ashelin for goodness sakes, and his own father had a harem of lovebirds!  
Did one ever see Samos waltzing around with girls chasing after him?

The young mechanic bowed her head, trying to shake the images of that night at the Naughty Ottsel from her head.  
"Got anymore beer Daxter?" she called, shivering from the endless cold that had befallen Haven City, as winter approached.

The ottsel nodded, sliding her a beer across the counter, and she caught it in her hand gratefully.  
It wasn't like her to drink, but she only had room for a few thoughts at the same time.

"Another drink 'ey Keira? Is Jak getting you down?"

She nodded slowly, but of course the blond was only half the problem.  
_He_ kept clouding her thoughts, never letting go, even though they had only been friends for a short while, and been together only once...

_Jak flashback.  
"Come on Keira! I want to show you something no one else has ever seen!"  
Keira wondered what the young renegade was up to, but she giggled and smiled as he dragged her along towards Spargus' beach._

_"What are we looking at?" she giggled again, like a teenager in love, and the sun began to slowly set._

_Jak took her in his warming arms, and pointed towards the sky._

_"We're just in time. Look."_

_And she saw it for the first time.  
Spargus' sunset._

_The city was too far away from the sun to witness the sunset, despite the utter heat it usually had, and no one else had ever witnessed a sun set apart from Jak, Daxter, and now, her._

_A rush of happiness flowed inside her, as she glowed.  
Jak had wanted to share the sunset with HER._

"Those were the good old days..." Keira sighed as another memory resurfaced.

_"Him" flashback.  
"Come on, dance with me!" he pleaded, never taking his eyes off her as he spoke.  
It was unusual to see him asking anyone for a dance, let alone DANCE, but both were a bit too drunk to realise what they were doing._

_He wasn't as drunk as her though, and hope glimmered in his eyes as she got up to dance with him, a slow waltz turning into a full blown tango._

_"Ugh, I'm beat..." she murmured into his chest after a few hours of dancing.  
"I'll make sure you get back to your room OK then." he offered, and Keira felt she couldn't refuse._

_After a few minutes of trying to stand strongly, he helped the mechanic to her room, and she weakly grasped the key to the door in her hand._

_He took it out of her delicate hands, unlocking the door, and starting to go inside.  
But she stepped forward a little too much, causing both of them to trip up, and fall flat on the floor inside her suite._

_He had incidentally fallen on top of her, and seems he was a quite comfortable weight, she was in no hurry to get up from her drunken stupour on the floor._

_She smiled seductively at him, his breath on her cheek making the hair on the back of her neck stand up._

_He crushed his lips to the young woman's, passion overriding reason, and his arms snaked up her back, making her senses tingle._

Keira had NEVER felt this way before, even with Jak, and though intoxicated and out of her mind, she loved this man more than she could EVER love Jak.

The woman in question shook her head, waking up from her flashbacks.  
As she shook herself from her reverie, she decided she was going to go and find Jak, and tell him.

Tell him exactly what she was planning to do.

"Thanks for the beer Daxter." she smiled, pushing some money and a tip towards her ottsel friend, who was at current, flirting too much with Tess to thank her.

Keira left the bar and pulled on her trenchcoat, wincing as the cold air bit into her exposed skin.  
She walked along towards Freedom HQ with a bounce in her step, in NO hurry to get there.

As she guessed, and suspected, Ashelin and Jak were perched on top of the planning table, cuddling and being generally coupley.

"Jak."

The hero spun around almost instantly, stopping dead as he saw Keira standing in the doorway, and started blushing.  
He quickly pried himself away from the red-headed seductress, and jumped off the table, straightening himself off a bit.

"Uh, um.. he-hey Keira..."

"Hello Jak." she greeted him courteously, nodding. "Ashelin."

A voice from the other side of the room piped up, someone that Keira hadn't noticed when she came in.

"Hey, I exist too, don't I get a hello?"

She grinned, and her face lit up - _he_ was there too?

_He_ was standing over, a few feet away from Ashelin, and she ran towards him, hugging him tightly as soon as she was in "Lemme-give-you-a-big-hug" range.

He wrapped his arms tightly around her, like he had done the night of the party, and she clung to him as though her very world depended on it, burying her nose in his cinnamon tainted scent.

The scent she remembered.

Jak and Ashelin's mouths hung open as the two closed the distance between their lips with a passionate kiss, her standing on her tip-toes to reach his lips.

"Nice bracelet." he murmured as they pulled apart, moving his arms down from her shoulders to her waist.  
Keira smiled, fiddling with it much like she had done in the Naughty Ottsel.

"Someone I care for a lot gave it to me."

As the sun rose to mid-sky, it caught the shards of jade decorating the bracelet, and the couple's hearts and souls were bound together, with sparkles of jade.

* * *

A/N: I used "he" a lot, because I want you guys to guess who Keira's new man is!  
Everyone that is right gets a cookie :3 


End file.
